Monday, October 14, 2013

Broadcasters Petition Supremes On Aereo Legality

Television broadcasters are asking the highest court in the United States for answers on Aereo's legality, according to THR.

The digital company captures over-the-air TV signals and relays them to subscribers' digital devices. The broadcasters have contended this is an infringement on their copyrights and specifically, a violation of their performance rights. A New York federal judge, however, refused to grant an injunction on the grounds that each Aereo subscriber was receiving a private, individualized transmission stream. In April, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that denial.

On Friday, the broadcasters filed a petition for writ of certiorari.

According to the petition, the question being presented is "whether a company 'publicly performs' a copyrighted television program when it retransmits a broadcast of that program to thousands of paid subscribers over the Internet."

The petitioners say that the 2nd Circuit ruling "threatens to upend" the billions of dollars that the TV industry has invested in programming "by blessing a business model that retransmits 'live TV' to paying customers without obtaining any authorization or paying a penny to the copyright owners."

No comments:

Post a Comment